Monday, August 20th
From the Kisatchie National Forest, we drove through the bayou to reach I-49 again and continuing heading south, bringing us to Alexandria. We made a loop that took us by the airpark and into town for gas and breakfast. About another hour south of Alexandria on I-49, we faced a decision in Lafayette: go further south to Avery Island or get on I-10 to go to Abita Springs. Chase made a few phone calls to reach the Abita Brewery and check their tour times, revealing that we would have to make Abita a stop on Wednesday if we wished to participate. So, we kept going south to the beautiful Avery Island, home of the McIlhenny family’s famous Tabasco sauce. To get on the island, we were stopped at a small tollbooth (well, really more of a tollhouse, like the cookie!), where a kind gentlemen asked for our dollar fee to support the wildlife conservation efforts and extended a stick with a clothespin on the end to exchange a card for our toll fee.
On Avery Island, we went on a Tabasco factory tour that included a guided exhibit and a short video before we filed past the bottling line. Though our hostess gave us two small bottles of Tabasco each, the best part of the tour was just a few steps away at the country store, where we were able to sample Tabasco’s range of sauces as well as jalapeno ice cream. Our favorite sauce was one of their newer products, the Sweet and Spicy Tabasco sauce, which Charla stocked up on for a shrimp boil in the very near future.
In the country store, we met Kina, a lovely sales associate who answered all of our questions, including where to find the nearest Post Office. Much of Avery Island (aside from the Tabasco property and something called Jungle Gardens) is restricted to residents only, but with Kina’s golden permission we were able to drive past the barricades to the Post Office. The Avery Island Post Office is a small, vine-covered building, with a nice Postmaster who helped us out with a variety of requests as we overloaded her with postcards, letters, and packages we’d been meaning to send for a while.
After leaving the restricted zone we jumped back on US90 to New Orleans and rolled into town in the mid-afternoon. As a gift to make the end of our trip awesome, Charla’s dad gave us a couple nights’ stay at the Loews New Orleans. We were greeted by the friendly staff outside who got a kick out of our vehicle that’s covered with dirt (and a few drawings in it), packed to the brim, and toting half of a bicycle. Inside, the front desk welcomed us with cold cherry lemonade and a basket of Louisiana treats like Abita beer and Zapp’s Voodoo potato chips. From there, we went up to the eighteenth floor, where our corner room offered nice views of the evening sun over the Mississippi River.
We only stayed in the room a short time before heading out to wander about the city of New Orleans. Coincidentally, on the way out the door the bellmen were just taking another vehicle with Alaska tags and “AK to FL” written on the windshield; come to find out we’re not the only guests in the hotel on this journey! They were on day twenty of an Anchorage – Fort Walton Beach drive, but they had taken a more northern route than us. After running into our “travel-mates” we continued on into the French Quarter to visit the Crescent City Brewhouse. They’re slogan is “The food’s so good you’ll forgot you came for the beer,” which largely proved true with unremarkable brews but amazing crabmeat stuffed shrimp and shrimp and grits! After dinner we decided to skip out on the wild-and-crazy French Quarter scene for the more sedate (and musically fascinating) scene on Frenchmen Street in the Faubourg Marginy neighborhood. We started our evening at Maison, which was hosting its Super Jam Open Mic night; on stage there was a core band of saxophone, keyboards, drums, and guitar, but accompanied by a constantly rotating assortment of horn players and vocalists. After a while of listening to different musicians, we moved a short way down the street to the Blue Nile where an extremely large and energetic brass band was rocking the night.
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